29 February 2012 5:42 PM

He talked about it like he was lucky, like anyone could have done it if they were willing to risk the physical punishment, but that single phase betrayed a unique talent: the speed of thought to change his defensive line when he saw the overlap, the agility to contort his body into a prostrate missile, the strength to keep his arms wrapped around a nuclear oak tree.

Sam Warburton was the lightest forward on the field that day facing the most powerful runner. His tackle on Manu Tuilagi, five metres from the try-line, ranks as one of the best I have ever seen. Nobody has so effectively chopped off Tuilagi's power at the source before. The Wales captain lassoed his claws around the Samoan's ankles and brought him down with three metres to spare.

Asked about it afterwards, Warburton said: 'I saw we only had Cuthbert on the blindside and I saw Manu get the ball. I went as low as I could to get away from his fend and hold on to him for my dear life. Close your eyes and dive at his ankles. You've got to be willing to fly in head first and break your nose.'

Warburton's agility around the breakdown is starting to make Richie McCaw look like a clumsy bear. Against England, he made Chris Robshaw look like Mr Blobby.

Robshaw is a diligent, passionate, impressive figure with many strengths to his game, but he is not an out-and-out openside — at best a six-and-a-half — and he was never going to compete.

Warburton, by contrast, was a born seven. He was rucking before he could crawl. His performance against England looks even better on second viewing. If the tackle defied physics, the rest of his game defied all logic.

The Wales captain had done no contact in training since the Ireland victory, in which he played only a stuttering part, 20 days earlier. He had spent most of the time since in the 'red room' — Wales' rehabilitation gym at the Vale — trying to resuscitate his dead leg in time for Scotland (a deadline he missed) and then England.

He admitted afterwards that the captain's run — the 20-minute team jog at the stadium on the day before the game — was the only session in which he had been fully involved before the England match. On the Thursday he had at least started the session with the team but dropped out before the heavy contact started.

How you emotionally and psychologically brace yourself for the physical torture of an Anglo-Welsh Triple Crown showdown in those circumstances is beyond the comprehension of mere mortals.

Warburton had also never faced England in a Six Nations match before, let alone led his side out in such circumstances into the Twickenham cauldron — and for once, thank goodness, the old stadium produced an atmosphere worthy of the label — yet he seemed only spurred on by the occasion.

Warburton has also achieved that unique status between aura and approachability. He feels like one of the gang to his team-mates and yet has the unmistakable aura of the leader. He is also a thoroughly decent bloke. You can tell a lot about a guy by the way he reacts to a dictaphone being shoved in his face when he would much rather be celebrating with his team-mates.

And where McCaw will always be the master of the dark arts of the breakdown, whose greatest gift is the consistent ability to breach, break or bend the laws of the game without being punished for it, Warburton rarely breaks the law.

It seems he doesn't really have to. He is so quick to get to the breakdown, so capable of reading the movement of the tackle to anticipate where he needs to be, so alert to the movement of team-mates and opponents, that his gift is to be at the right place at the right time. And all of Wales should be grateful for that.

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15 February 2012 12:10 PM

England versus Wales at Twickenham is more than a Triple Crown decider in this Six Nations championship. It is a litmus test for New England, a game that will tell us everything about this composite band of brothers and essentially determine the fate of the interim head coach Stuart Lancaster.

All due respect to the Azurri and sleepwalking Scots, but England have clearly faced the worst two teams in the tournament and ridden the lucky sweet chariot to bum-clenching victory. They worked bloody hard, fronted-up, defended well, kept structure and formation but they did precious little in attack. It was sterile and suffocating to watch.

The idea behind having two supposed distributers looks questionable. Perhaps it is a dramatic flourish in smoke-and-mirror tactics – like picking Peter Crouch ahead of Lionel Messi and playing a tiki-taka game regardless.

We were told the luxury of having Charlie Hodgson and Owen Farrell in the shuffled back line meant endless, rich, foot-forward ball for the back three. Instead, Farrell is rarely involved in attack, and fellow centre Brad Barritt is simply given a short pass to charge forward.

It might make an occasional yard but it will not earn you tries against any international defence worthy of the name. When Farrell does touch the ball in possession rarely, if ever, is it suggested he might pass.

Why does the white of England become an all-restricting straightjacket? The charge-down has been England’s most creative move of the Championship. Ben Foden, the chirpy, counter-attacking firecracker that torments first-up tacklers for fun in the Premiership, look as lost on a rugby pitch under Lancaster as he did under Martin Johnson. It is all very puzzling.

After Lancaster’s first press conference in the new-age ‘Spirit of Rugby’ room at Twickenham, and all his scripted utterings of ‘culture’ and ‘pride’, someone remarked that he was one of two things: ‘He’s either a genius or he’s David Brent’. And they had a point.

Lancaster’s sport psychology ramblings, the management speak, the corporate rhetoric about 'success' and 'visions' only really works if you’re winning and playing well. In a losing team, in an underperforming outfit, it very quickly begins to sound like vacuous gobbledygook.

A new team needs time, of course, but a new team also has a unique opportunity to change what was wrong with the old team. They might have started with creativity and ambition. It would be nice to see a little intent to try something in attack.

Wales called a set move off a lineout in Dublin – the weakest in the armoury, according to George North – and they scored a game-changing try off it. When was the last time England’s backs called a move off a lineout? I’d guess somewhere around 2002.

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08 February 2012 10:42 AM

Half-time in Dublin. The away changing room. Wales are five points down and drowning in a sea of green. Then Shaun Edwards pipes up.

They call it the 'spirit of Samoa'. It is a reference to Wales' thrilling, bruising, must-win victory over the mighty Pacific Islanders in the pool stage of the World Cup.

It was the coming of age of this Wales team. The moment an unproven side of young talent showed a courage and self-belief we didn't know was there. An infantile side became war veterans. If you like, it was 80 minutes of Test rugby puberty.

Head coach Warren Gatland often repeats the mantra that his side are most dangerous under one of two conditions: either they are full of swagger and confidence and throwing the ball around with devastating glee, or they find themselves standing on the unwelcome precipice of defeat, in a situation requiring backs-to-the-wall, balls-on-the-line rugby.

Sunday brought out the latter. Bloodied and blowing at half-time, Edwards told his players to remember Samoa. That they had been here before and come out the other side.

It was a day of reckoning and a source of strength. When captain Sam Warburton reaches breaking point in the latter stages of a Test match, when his lungs are burning and his thighs are leaden, he thinks back to his 'dark place', the training sessions he survived in Poland, and it gives him belief. For the team, that dark place is Samoa and they will never forget that they came home with the T-shirt.

For this generation of England players no such reference point yet exists. Yes, those players who remain from the World Cup campaign, and Six Nations tournaments previous, have played in tough Test matches and — sometimes — emerged victorious.

But when the proverbial faeces has hit the wind turbine, they have ended up covered in the stuff. The Grand Slam meltdown in Dublin last year, where they were steamrolled into flat-pack furniture, the World Cup quarter-final in Eden Park, where they were pipped to the post by one of the most fractious squads in history, those November Tests, where South Africa showed a very simple way of breaking down the English way (doing it better).

The simple truth is New England needs its Samoa moment and, only then, we will really know what we're dealing with. Italy, even in Rome, doesn't count.

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04 February 2012 10:09 AM

I had been in Cardiff for somewhere between three and three-and-a-half minutes before it was first mentioned. 'I ******* tell you what. It ******* was not a red ******* card.'

The more creative adults among you can probably fill in the blanks.

Perhaps, one day, Sam Warburton's red card in that World Cup semi-final will be to the Welsh rugby fraternity what 'Macbeth' is to a thespian crowd. An unspeakable word, whose very mention brings out cold sweats and misfortune. I think the Romans called it 'nefas' but it's all Greek to me.

Alas, for the moment it is all they are talking about on Queen Street. At least Warburton himself has moved on. The Wales captain is utterly engaging and effortlessly polite (he's also a Tottenham fan and a drummer, what's not to like?).

He is someone who comes across so well because the niceness on the surface is actually sincere. He is far too sound in the head to let that red card affect his future, which is good news all round.

As it turned out, I met a taxi driver in Cardiff who has an even worse memory of a match against France. In 1979 he and a few mates saved up a little kitty and travelled to Paris to watch a France-Wales Five Nations match. It was now dusk for the golden generation of players in the Seventies and Wales duly lost. Mr Cab Driver drowned his sorrows in spectacular, Special Brew fashion.

He disappeared for a week, and woke up seven days later, back in Cardiff. His wife had a sponge to his head because he was groaning so loudly. Putting together anecdotes and empirical evidence (supplied by eagerly reminiscing friends), it seems he had enjoyed a seven-day bender in Paris. Only he couldn't remember a thing.

He blames it on the strength of the beer — he was drinking the same volume of a much higher percentage — but was so disturbed by the memory loss that he vowed never to touch another drop. To this day he hasn't.

There's a moral in there somewhere: if only every kid from Wales went on a seven-day bender...

*********************

So predictions for weekend one are fairly difficult to call. Well, two of the three at least.

France, reinvigorated by the fact they are being managed by a coach not a clown, will demolish Italy, who are not quite so reinvigorated by the fact they are being managed by a new coach who is arguably less suitable than their old coach. Do keep up.

Scotland versus England is very difficult to call. They always say the first 10 minutes of a Test match are key but surely this time more than ever. Give this England team 'go-forward' and a spring in their step and they could well do some damage, but if things fall apart it could get very messy very quickly. In fact, take five players out the team (Foden, Ashton, Youngs, Croft and Hartley) and you are looking at last year's Saxons side.

Ireland versus Wales could be equally tight for different reasons. A fully fit Wales team should win in Cardiff, but a good handful of the World Cup stars are either rusty or resting. Either way, it should be a good old Celtic celebration of rugby and the back-row battle is the key. Next year's Lions back row will surely be a composite Irish-Welsh affair, so watch this space.